I'm officially over the hero trope. That's a framework being built by well-intentioned people who want to help us, but can't, or far worse, ill-intentioned people who can help us, but won't. 1/

Let's be clear about this - we aren't heroes. We're just people doing our jobs. And we love our jobs, and we're happy to do it, but it was never supposed to be a job done at our peril. 2/

It was already hard enough to do this job under the everyday emotional and physical abuses induced by patients, their families, and sometimes other staff. (BTW, we've been screaming into the void about this for years and we weren't heroes then, but I digress...) 3/

Then there's the shocking suicide rate amongst doctors and nurses. We've been screaming about that one for years, too. Not a lot of hero status calls when those stories came out. 4/

So now we're literally risking our lives to simply do our jobs. A job, by the way, that we can't just not do. That's abandonment, and we can lose our licenses for it. 5/

So yeah, we love our jobs and we're happy to do it, but we're not heroes. We're just people who want to do our jobs SAFELY. We want to do this so that we can get you well and get you home - SAFELY.

We don't want to be called heroes, but we do need your help. 6/

Instead of calling us heroes, do this instead:

1. WASH your hands. Often.
2. Stay INDOORS.
3. Use your VOICE. Call your congressperson & your governor. Please. Implore THEM to help us.
4. In November, remember who abandoned us. Remember their names. #remembertheirnames

/end

Addendum: Don’t lose sight of how we got here. This is the BS we have to fight when the Covid19 battle is over.
https://twitter.com/thepondinthebox/status/1090695161359654912?s=21 https://twitter.com/thepondinthebox/status/1090695161359654912